I’m going to take a pause for a second and congratulate Fidel on coming clean on something, but the admission is so little compared to how many non gay lives he has destroyed.

Fidel Castro Takes Blame for Persecution of Cuban GaysBBC: Fidel Castro has said that he is ultimately responsible for the persecution suffered by homosexuals in Cuba after the revolution of 1959.The former president told the Mexican newspaper La Jornada that there were moments of great injustice against the gay community.“If someone is responsible, it’s me,” he said.In the 1960s and 70s, many homosexuals in Cuba were fired, imprisoned or sent to “re-education camps”.Mr Castro said homosexuals had traditionally been discriminated in Cuba, just as black people and women.But, nevertheless, he admits he didn’t pay enough attention to what was going on against the gay community.“At the time we were being sabotaged systematically, there were armed attacks against us, we had too many problems,” said the 84-year-old Communist leader.“Keeping one step ahead of the CIA, which was paying so many traitors, was not easy.”In 1979, homosexuality was decriminalised and, more recently, there have been efforts to legalise same-sex unions. >>> | Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Asking for an apology from a guy who destroyed lives for a half a century and more is a joke. Do you think Fidel would come clean about what he did to the state of Israel and about his empathy for fascism?

I don’t know about you, but when I see someone I think is trying to kill me I generally don’t act like an uptight stiff and I try to accommodate. The videos I saw was her acting uppity. I grew up near Columbia University. There was a story about a preppy college kid who acted smart and reminded his robbers that they forgot twenty dollars. He was shot dead. If the IDF were really the intolerant menace she describes she would of got the Columbia University mugger treatment. Obviously she is lying and manipulative. her damn photo tells the whole story. She is a snotty woman who gets off on this. ‘Israeli Arab’ MK Hanin Zoabi testified before the UN ‘Human Rights Council’s commission investigating the Mavi Marmara incident on Tuesday.

“It was evident from the beginning that the commandoes viewed all of us activists as terrorists,” Zoabi told The Associated Press after her testimony before a three-member U.N. team headed by Karl Hudson-Phillips, former judge of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.“Israel’s use of large numbers of elite troops with sophisticated weaponry showed it intended to kill the passengers,” added the lawmaker, who was aboard the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara, where the killing took place. “We were very peaceful activists, but the commandoes came to kill,” she said.

back to the Columbia University story…. it was probably someone who Obama knew who got shot for acting snotty to a mugger, because Obama was at the school when this went down. Not really relevant to the story… but in some ways it is.

Palestinian terrorists murdered four Jewish civilians in a shooting attack at the Bani Naim junction just south of Hevron Tuesday evening. Emergency service paramedics could do nothing to save the victims whose bodies were riddled with bullets. The terrorists reportedly made sure their victims were dead by shooting them from close range after the initial fusillade.The victims are a husband and wife, parents of ten, and two passengers. Their names were cleared for publication Tuesday night by local police:

Yitzhak and Talia Ames

Kochava Even Chaim

Avishai Shindler

The four were all citizens of Beit Hagai.A Zaka volunteer who arrived on the scene broke down in tears when he neared the car and discovered that one of the victims was his wife. The IDF is combing the area, searching for the terrorists.One of the victims had a license for a gun that was suspended shortly before the attack. Itamar Ben-Gvir and Baruch Marzel said at the scene that serious soul-searching must be done “in order to find out how it is that Jews are deprived of the basic right to defend themselves.”Hamas took “credit” for the terror attack.

The terror attack is typical of Arab “resistance” attacks that intentionally target civilian victims. A survey carried out by a PA organization in early August found that among the Arab public in the Palestinian Authority, over 55% view violence as either essential or desirable, nearly 31% see it as either acceptable or tolerable, and only 13.7% say it is unacceptable.

The attack was probably timed to coincide with and affect the direct talks between Israel and the PA in Washington, D.C., that are to begin Thursday. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said upon landing in Washington that the talks would proceed as planned, despite the murders.The scene of the attack. Bullets smashed through the windshield.

of course this will have no effect on any so called peace negotiations between Israel and someone who has nothing to do with this attack. Why are we talking to a person without any power?Two State Delusions

The variously-spelled Muammar Ghedaffi is visiting Italy again, and has been engaging in his customary idiosyncrasies since his arrival. Yesterday he hectored the Italians about their lack of respect for women, and today he is demanding annual payments from the EU — or else.And what is Col. Gadafi threatening if Europe fails to heed his demand for jizyah payments? He promises the Europeans that if they don’t pony up, they will be overwhelmed by black immigrants from Africa.When reading about the Colonel’s warning, it’s important to remember that he is not threatening the EU with the prospect of Libyans or Tuaregs or Egyptians. He is promising an influx of those whom Libyans (and all Arabs) consider sub-men: negroes. Arabs refer to black Africans as ’abeed (the plural of ’abd), which means “slaves” or “negroes” interchangeably.So watch out, Europe! Time to get out the checkbook:

EU: Pay Billions or be Swamped by Black Africans, Warns GadaffiRome, 31 August (AKI) — The European Union must pay 5 billion dollars annually to stem the tide of illegal immigrants departing from Libya’s shores — otherwise Europe could be become an African outpost, Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi has claimed.Gadaffi made the provocative remarks during a two-day visit to the Italian capital, Rome to mark the second anniversary of a controversial bilateral ‘friendship’ pact.“Libya, with Italy’s support, asks the EU to provide at least 5 billion dollars a year to stop illegal immigration, otherwise Europe could one day become part of Africa — it could become black, because millions want to come here,” Gadaffi said.He made the remarks during a speech at a gala dinner in Rome late on Monday hosted by Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and attended by 800 people.

Guests at the ‘iftar’ feast to break the Ramadan fast included several cabinet ministers and the heads of Italy’s main business association Confindustria, its largest defence and aerospace company Finmeccanica and energy giant ENI.“Libya is a gateway for illegal immigration and so we need to work together to combat this phenomenon,” Gadaffi added.Earlier during his visit, Gadaffi drew criticism from the EU and Catholics for telling hundreds of young women he invited to hear him speak that he hoped Islam would become the 27-member bloc’s religion.Under the friendship pact, Italy’s conservative government agreed pay Libya some 5 billion dollars (4 billion euros) in reparations for transgressions committed during three decades of Italian colonial rule over the North African nation from 1911-1943.The money will mostly be invested in infrastructure projects, including a new 2,700 kilometre highway across Libya from Tunisia to Egypt.Italy also provided several coastal patrol boats to intercept vessels transporting illegal immigrants to Italian shores, as part of a controversial agreement to turn back immigrants in the Mediterranean.Italy is Libya’s largest trading partner and it is Gadaffi’s fourth visit in two years.

By the way: as a matter of principle, I try never to spell Moamer Ghadafi the same way twice. It’s easy to manage, because the numerous variant official spellings of his name allow the enterprising blogger to refer to him hundreds of times without being orthographically repetitive.

With GOP like this who needs Democrats?support Barbara Boxer. At least she supports Israel.When the GOP wants to really be the party they claim to be… let me know.Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina is coming to Israel for the weekend.

Republican Senate nominee Carly Fiorina has maintained a vigorous pace on the campaign trail this summer, but at the traditional kickoff to the general election she is heading to Israel for what her aides describe as a “personal trip.”The Labor Day weekend tour is a surprising diversion for the first-time candidate, who weighed in on U.S.-Israeli relations during her primary campaign but has kept a laser-like focus on job losses and rising government spending while sparring with Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer this summer.Although Fiorina’s campaign manager, Marty Wilson, said the trip is not intended to “drive any publicity” while she’s in the country, it seems destined for maximum exposure.It will serve to remind conservative evangelicals, a key Republican voter bloc that sympathizes with Israel, of Fiorina’s candidacy, and could also capture the attention of Jewish voters, who usually side with Democrats.The four-day trip is being arranged and paid for by the Republican Jewish Coalition. It begins a day after Israeli and Palestinian leaders are scheduled to resume direct peace talks in Washington and right after Fiorina’s first debate with Boxer, two events that could steer voters’ attention back to foreign policy.Wilson dismissed questions about the timing by saying that the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive has long wanted to visit Israel. “They are a vital link to that region of the world; they are a democracy and one that we have to support,” Wilson said. “For Carly to be informed and updated on what’s happening over there is a good thing.”Fiorina, however, suggested in an interview with an Israeli business publication earlier this month that she had more ambitious designs. Alluding to a possible trip, she said she hoped to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to “convey directly to the people of Israel that they will not have a stronger friend in the U.S. Senate than me.”

Richard Cohen has shown over the decades to have no loyalty to a Jewish State, but now he seems to be showing some new colors. He is starting to understand what the rest of America thought was obvious.

Say what you will about the Arab world, it’s hard to earn its gratitude. President Obama went to Egypt and not Israel. He demanded that Israel cease adding new settlements in the West Bank. He treated Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu with a chilling disdain. For all of that, though, Obama’s approval rating in Arab countries has sunk. Unlike almost a fifth of Americans, the Arab world clearly knows Obama is no Muslim.

The polls show some startling numbers. When this spring the Pew Global Attitudes Project asked residents of Islamic countries what they thought about Obama, he got good marks when it came to such matters as climate change. But when the question was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the numbers not only declined in Indonesia and Turkey, they nearly went through the floor in the three Arab countries polled. In Jordan, 84 percent disapproved of the way Obama was handling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In Egypt, the figure was 88 percent and in Lebanon it was 90 percent. For Obama, the figures must be disheartening. They strongly suggest that his attempt to woo the Arab world, to convince it that America can be an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians, has dismally failed. In fact, the extent of this failure is most stark in Lebanon. There, 100 percent of Shiite respondents — in other words, Hezbollah and others — have no faith in Obama and his good intentions. This may be a setback for Obama, but it is paradoxically a success for American values. What the Arab world seems to appreciate is that America will never agree to what the Arab world most wants — an Islamic state where a Jewish one now exists. This entirely reasonable conclusion is based on what has long been American policy — not what the State Department wanted but what the American people supported. America has always liked the idea of Israel. The Arab world, for totally understandable reasons, has always hated it. Nothing has changed. A fundamental document in this area — a once-secret CIA analysis from 1947 — was unearthed (to my knowledge) by Thomas W. Lippman and reported in the winter 2007 issue of the Middle East Journal. The CIA strongly argued that the creation of Israel was not in America’s interests and that therefore Washington ought to be opposed. This was no different than what later diplomats and military men (most recently, David Petraeus) have argued and it is without a doubt correct. Supporting Israel hurts America in the Islamic — particularly the Arab — world and, given the crucial importance of Middle Eastern oil, makes no practical sense.

The CIA further argued that the so-called Arab-Israeli conflict would soon widen to become an Israeli-Islamic conflict — another bull’s-eye for what was then an infant intelligence service. That process was already underway, which is why some non-Arabs (Bosnian Muslims, for instance) fought the creation of Israel, and has only intensified as radical Islam, laced with healthy doses of anti-Semitism, has gotten even stronger. But where the CIA went wrong — and not, alas, for the last time — was in predicting that the Arabs would defeat Israel and that the state would not survive. The CIA was pretty sure of the outcome, what a later CIA figure might have called a “slam dunk.” What neither the CIA nor, for that matter, the anti-Israel State Department recognized in the late 1940s is that America’s interests are not always measurably pragmatic — metrics, in the jargon of our day. Sometimes, our interests reflect our national ethic, an affinity for other democracies, sympathy for the underdog. These, too, are in America’s interests and they may be modified, but not abandoned, for the sake of mere metrics. This is why Obama’s overture to the Arab world, clumsily executed, was never going to succeed. America can please some Arab governments — Egypt and Jordan, for instance — but not the Arab people. What they want, and what they have been told repeatedly they deserve, is a return of Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel and control over all of Jerusalem. These are both out of the question as far as Israel is concerned. It is not willing to give up its capital and, in a relatively short time, its Jewish majority. This week, Palestinians and Israelis will once again talk peace in Washington. But until both sides, particularly the Arab peoples, give up on what they really want, the clock will remain where it has been. Those Pew polls show that’s around 1947. cohenr@washpost.com